Warrington Ph.D. student graduates from UF with tenure-track position and best paper

Recent Information Systems & Operations Management Ph.D. graduate Hongseok Jang has a lot to be proud of as he ends his time at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business. Not only was his recent paper named among the best at a Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) meeting, but Jang will also begin a new role as an assistant professor at Tulane University this summer.

The paper, “Store Brand Introduction and Multilateral Contracting,” received an honorable mention at the POMS College of Supply Chain Management Student Paper Competition. In the paper, Jang and his co-authors Assistant Professor Amy Pan and University of Science and Technology of China’s Quan Zheng (Ph.D. ’18) highlight why it’s advantageous to produce store brand products, even those that aren’t popular with customers.

For example, Amazon produces store brand apparel, but not because it sells well. Four out of five Amazon women’s clothing brands are selling fewer than 100 items per month. While it may seem odd that Amazon continues to produce these store brand apparel items with negligible sales, Jang, Pan and Zheng’s research sheds light on why they do so regardless of the substantial financial and operational cost of introducing and managing store brands.

Having insightful research like this on his CV aided Jang in his search for an academic position post-Ph.D. Tulane University took note of his excellent research and teaching skills and hired him as an assistant professor of management science. In his role, Jang will teach courses in operations management, including operations analysis and spreadsheet modeling, and business analytics, such as machine learning.

“I have common research interest with faculty from Management Science group of Tulane University,” said Jang, whose primary research interests include retail operations, e-commerce, supply chain management and business analytics. “I am thrilled to join Tulane University because of its distinguished faculty dedicated to high-quality research and teaching and their collegial research environment. I am excited to contribute to this amazing research group and cannot wait to be one of it.”

Jang notes that his experience as a Ph.D. student at the Warrington College of Business was key to helping him build his research career path and develop his teaching skills.

“I was able to form research relationships with a distinguished faculty in a collegial atmosphere,” he said. “They strongly encouraged me to begin my first research project immediately after admission and to explore research ideas without any restriction during my Ph.D. program. In particular, ISOM Ph.D. seminars provided by our faculty members fostered my research idea generations and discussions with my colleagues. When I was on the job market, all ISOM faculty spared no effort of sharing their knowledge and experiences with me for improving my job market paper presentation and interviews.”

For faculty at Warrington, like Jang’s advisors Amy Pan and Janice Carrillo, supporting students through academic and professional development opportunities is paramount in preparing students for their future careers. Both Pan and Carrillo are proud to see their support has propelled Jang into a tenure-track position. 

“Hongseok is a very intelligent, well trained, self-motivated and diligent Ph.D. student,” Pan said. “He has broad research interests and has been working on six research projects in operations management, information system and marketing areas. I am very proud of Hongseok and that he was offered a tenure-track Assistant Professor job at Tulane University in this extremely competitive year. He is a very friendly and down to earth person whom I would love to have as a colleague. I am confident that he will be successful in his academic career.” 

Carrillo added, “Hongseok has demonstrated keen insights and intuition in mastering current research problems. He is a well-rounded scholar who can (a) incorporate appropriate research techniques, (b) address managerially realistic and relevant problems, and (c) communicate them effectively. He will make an excellent addition to the faculty at Tulane.”